‘Are you sure this apartment on the Isle of Wight belongs to my mother?’ Rowan Lyster said, puzzled.
Gina Lyster had shown them into the small lounge where her husband sat sprawled on the sofa. He made no attempt to rise or even shift position. He was dressed in jogging pants and a black T-shirt bearing his company name and logo. His square-set face showed the trace of a suntan, his short, dark hair was held in place with gel, he was clean-shaven but his deep brown eyes were red-rimmed either from fatigue or weeping or perhaps both. Gina was also dressed in sportswear but the tight-fitting kind that accentuated her rounded figure and a close-fitting pink Lycra top that didn’t boast the corporate logo. She took the seat beside her husband and waved them into the two chairs opposite.
On the wall were two very large framed and rather spectacular pictures of Rowan Lyster windsurfing. Horton thought he’d put on a bit of weight since they’d been taken but Lyster was still fairly muscular with strong, slightly tanned arms. There was also a wedding picture of him and Gina on a shelf on a modern corner unit but no pictures of his parents or Gina’s.
‘Could there have been someone new in her life? Another man?’ Horton asked, watching their reactions as he knew Cantelli was.
‘She didn’t say,’ Rowan replied. Gina threw them a baffled look and then her husband a concerned one.
‘Would she have told you if there was?’
Rowan shrugged. Horton didn’t know if that was because he wasn’t sure whether his mother would have confided in him or because he wasn’t really bothered if she’d had another man.
He said, ‘Did she ever mention a Peter Freedman?’
Neither of them showed any reaction to the name but both denied having heard her mention him. And neither of them asked who he was.
‘Did she travel to the Isle of Wight much?’ asked Cantelli.
Rowan threw Cantelli a slightly irritated look. ‘I’ve no idea. Does it matter? She’s dead and that’s the end of it.’
Gina shifted slightly, as though disturbed by her husband’s harsh tone and words.
Horton said, ‘I know this must be distressing for you but your mother’s death is unexplained, Mr Lyster, and therefore questions have to be asked.’
‘But she died of natural causes,’ he cried, exasperated.
‘That is not the verdict of the coroner and until it is we need to continue investigating the circumstances surrounding her death. Your mother bought and refurbished the property on the Isle of Wight eight years ago and then sold off all the apartments except for the top floor which she kept for herself. She was there on Sunday night and returned from there on Monday morning before heading for the Guernsey ferry. Did she mention to either of you that she was going to the Isle of Wight either late Saturday night or Sunday morning?’
Gina answered first. ‘No.’
Rowan shook his head.
Cantelli retrieved his mobile phone from his jacket pocket and stretched it across to Rowan, saying, ‘This is the man your mother was with. Do either of you recognize him?’
Horton watched them closely as they peered at the photograph. Their only reaction was continued bafflement.
Putting the phone back in his pocket, Cantelli addressed Rowan Lyster. ‘How did your mother seem when you saw her on Saturday evening?’
‘Fine.’
But Horton noted Rowan shift perceptibly. ‘Did you usually go round to her apartment on Saturdays?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Was the dinner invitation at her request?’
Gina interjected: ‘We asked if she could help us to buy some more windsurfing equipment for the centre. We’d been offered a good deal. She refused. She said that we had enough for our second season, which is this year, and that if bookings looked good then she’d reconsider. We said that the deal wouldn’t be on the table later but she said that deals were always on the table when someone had the cash or they wanted to offload something quickly.’
I bet she did. Horton was beginning to get a clearer picture of Evelyn Lyster, a clever woman used to doing deals, but in what? If her activities had been criminal then what had she been involved in? What had she been selling? Information? What kind, though? Had she been a blackmailer and Freedman one of her victims? No. His clothes wouldn’t have been in her apartment if he had been. Horton had no confirmation that they were Freedman’s clothes but he was certain they were. Perhaps he was party to the blackmail. Freedman had access to many people and, using his neuro-linguistic programming skills and the other techniques he practised, he could have elicited confidences which he then passed on to Evelyn Lyster to blackmail those individuals. But that still didn’t stack up because she’d purchased that Isle of Wight property eight years ago and Freedman had been a vagrant then.
‘You rowed,’ he said.
Gina answered, ‘No. We were disappointed but we knew that we wouldn’t be able to change her mind. Evelyn is – was – very determined. When she said “no” you knew she meant it.’
Cantelli looked up from his notebook. ‘Did she talk about any of her clients or her friends?’
‘Not to me. Rowan?’
He shook his head and his brow furrowed.
‘Do you have details of any of your mother’s friends?’ Horton asked.
‘No.’
‘None?’ Horton probed, raising his eyebrows and injecting enough incredulity in his voice to make Rowan give him a surly glare.
‘I spent most of my childhood away at school and after that travelling the world in competitions so I don’t know who her friends and clients were. And I’ve no idea where she kept that kind of information. It wasn’t something we discussed.’
Horton wondered what they had talked about.
‘I only returned here last August with Gina so we could start the business and get married.’
‘Did you see much of your father?’
‘No. He’d been made redundant by then but Gina and I were living together in a flat in Southsea, not with my parents.’
In a conversational tone, Cantelli said, ‘What school did you go to?’
‘Saint Levan’s in Cornwall.’
‘That’s a fair distance from here,’ Cantelli replied, surprised.
Horton thought that you couldn’t get any further away from Portsmouth except for Scotland.
‘It’s where I learned to surf. I already sailed. I used to go out with Dad before I went to Saint Levan’s. We had a boat then. The school was very keen on water sports, which was why my parents chose it. They knew I was very good at it.’
‘But you came home during the school holidays?’ Cantelli continued.
‘My parents were rarely in the UK. Dad worked overseas and my mother travelled a lot with her business.’
Maybe Rowan hadn’t minded but Horton wondered just how often Rowan Lyster had seen his mother and father. Why, if his parents relationship was strained and their son away at school, hadn’t they got divorced? Perhaps they couldn’t be bothered. They’d stayed married for convenience’s sake. It had suited them both, until Dennis Lyster had been made redundant.
Cantelli said, ‘How did you live? I mean money-wise after you’d left school?’
Horton knew Cantelli was wondering if Rowan’s parents had supported him.
‘I won competitions and I endorsed certain windsurfing equipment for which I got paid. I also worked for various water-sports organisations, teaching windsurfing and other water sports: kayaking, dinghy sailing, paddle boarding. I earned enough. I was single then.’
‘And now you’ve decided to settle down,’ Cantelli said, smiling at Gina, who looked undecided about returning it. ‘Won’t you miss travelling?’
‘Been there, done that,’ he said airily.
‘And now, of course, you’ll inherit your mother’s estate.’
Cantelli’s words took a moment to sink in.
Rowan’s eyes narrowed and his face flushed. ‘Hey, what are you inferring?’
‘Nothing,’ said Cantelli neutrally, tucking away his notebook with a bland expression.
Horton rose. ‘We know this must be a very difficult time for you and we’re sorry to trouble you but we will need your mother’s keys. We’ll also need to seal off her apartment here and on the island.’
‘But—’
‘We will keep you fully informed.’
Gina rose and left the room. She returned almost instantly with the keys.
As Horton took them from her, he addressed Rowan. ‘When was the last time you saw your father, Mr Lyster?’
He looked stunned by the question. Gina answered before he could. ‘It was at our wedding, a week before his body was found.’
Cantelli looked up. ‘So you were on your honeymoon when you received the news?’
‘No, we’d postponed it until the winter. It being March, we needed to get the business up and running. We had a few bookings. Evelyn gave us some capital to get the business off the ground and helped us to buy this house by giving us the deposit for it after Dennis died.’
So Evelyn Lyster had been generous. And when they’d asked for more she thought she’d already given them enough.
As Horton made to leave he asked one more question. ‘Do either of you know a man called Vivian Clements?’
‘No.’
‘Mrs Lyster?’
‘No.’
Neither of them asked why he wanted to know.
Outside, Horton said, ‘Why didn’t Evelyn and Dennis Lyster divorce? There doesn’t seem to have been much love between them.’
‘Perhaps one or both of them were Catholic. Saint Levan’s could be a Catholic school. Not that I know that particular saint – there are so many. The Catholic Church is big on saints.’
‘Convenient then that eight months after being made redundant Dennis Lyster decides to drown himself.’
‘And suicide would have been against his religion, if he was a Catholic. But if he was driven to it then the catechism offers hope in prayer. We didn’t ask if Rowan had been raised in the Catholic faith. Maybe we should have done.’
‘Check out his school. See if you can get more from them on Evelyn and Dennis Lyster.’
Cantelli’s phone rang as he reached his car. Horton waited by his Harley for Cantelli to finish his call, which he did within a couple of minutes. ‘That was the mortuary. Glyn Ashmead has identified Peter Freedman’s body and they’re ready for Constance Clements to identify her husband. Do you want to come?’
‘No. Call round to collect her now if she’s ready. Ask her if she knew why Freedman went to Japan. I’m going to have another word with Glyn Ashmead.’
Horton made his way back through the busy Portsmouth streets to the station, where he parked the Harley and once again set off on foot to Gravity. He remembered that Martha had told him that Sheila Broadway worked on Fridays. She was the lady who handled the clothing donations and Horton wondered if she’d recognize the coat Freedman had been wearing when he was killed. She didn’t. And neither did she know Freedman because she had never worked at the centre on a Tuesday. Horton wasn’t sure if Ashmead was back from the mortuary but Sheila said he was – a police car had dropped him off. He was in his office. Horton was about to make for it when Martha walked in.
‘We’re shorthanded and Glyn’s not too well,’ she explained with a worried frown. Martha didn’t look too bright herself. He could see that she was genuinely concerned for Ashmead. He wondered if she secretly had a thing for him or perhaps they were in a relationship. ‘Peter’s death has really shaken him up,’ she added.
Horton asked her if she’d ever heard Freedman mention a woman called Evelyn Lyster.
‘No. Like I said, he never talked about anybody.’
‘Has Glyn ever mentioned her?’
‘No.’ She offered him a coffee, which this time he refused.
He found Ashmead in his office looking tired and, as Martha had said, clearly unwell. Stress was etched on his lean face, making him look more haggard than before. Horton wondered if it was a result of identifying Freedman and said so but Ashmead, although admitting that had been distressing, said he’d also received news that a sponsor had pulled out of supporting the centre and the council were threatening to cut back their funding.
Freedman’s bequest would come in handy then, thought Horton, taking the seat across from Ashmead’s desk. Horton had no idea what the amount might be but if it was shown to have been gained illegally then the benefactors – Gravity and the Salvation Army – might never see it. Not that Horton had any evidence Freedman had been involved in whatever Evelyn Lyster’s game had been. He could purely have been her lover, except for the fact he had been murdered.
‘I won’t keep you long. I just want to know if you’ve ever seen this woman before.’ Horton handed over his phone containing the photograph of Evelyn Lyster. He watched Ashmead peer at it. After a moment he looked up and handed it back.
‘No. Attractive woman, though. Is there a connection between her and Peter?’
‘It seems they were close.’
‘He never said. But then why should he? His private life was none of my business, unless he cared to confide it to me and he didn’t. Does she know what happened to Peter?’
‘She’s dead.’
Ashmead’s tired dark eyes widened. ‘Killed?’
‘We’re not sure yet. Does the name Evelyn Lyster mean anything to you?
‘Sorry, no.’ Ashmead looked disturbed and dejected. ‘Do you want me to show the picture to the other staff and volunteers and ask them about her?’
Horton said he did but to do it discreetly. He told him he’d already asked Martha and Sheila. Horton emailed the photograph to Ashmead, wished him luck with his funding and left. He’d only just stepped outside when his phone rang. It was John Guilbert. ‘I’ve just broken the news to Detective Superintendent Uckfield and, having just recovered my hearing, thought I’d ring you. Evelyn Lyster wasn’t poisoned, at least not in the strictest sense, but an analysis of the lining of her flask shows the presence of a beta blocker.’
Horton quickly wracked his brain for his limited medical information. ‘Used by athletes and prohibited in some sports.’
‘Yes, and sometimes prescribed to those with high blood pressure. In themselves beta blockers aren’t harmful but if given to someone suffering from low blood pressure they could be. It’s taken a while for the toxicologist to narrow it down but from the analysis of what remains, it’s a beta blocker, or rather two, Atenolol and Nifedipine. They’re prescription medicines used in hypertension and angina. Atenolol and Nifedipine work together to block the effects of certain chemicals in the body and are used to lower blood pressure, reduce the frequency and severity of angina attacks and slow the heart rate.’
‘And for someone already suffering from a low heart rate reducing it further could stop it completely.’
‘Yes.’
‘So it is murder.’
‘Looks that way. Now all you have to do is find out who put it in her flask and when! Good luck.’
‘I think we’ll need it.’